Candy Rant

"I killed a rat with a stick once."

Thursday, November 30, 2006

And Now a Word From Our Zombies

I haven't blogged for awhile. Why? Because it's the end of the semester. No, you didn't hear me right. The end of the semester.

Candy and all her colleagues have lost the will to live.

We had 10 days off for Thanksgiving Break. I graded papers every friggin' day, trying to become master over the merciless pile of student writing. It didn't happen. But at least I got to avoid putting actual classroom-appropriate clothes on for a good long time. I could be a total slob, cozying up in my raggedy sweats and angry T-shirts.

Upon returning to work this past Monday, I entered the bleak hallways of the English Department to see even bleaker faces. It's hard to describe that look, but every faculty member had it. Like there's extra gravity on each face, forming a melting, somebody-put-me-outta-my-misery old coon dog who can't get out from under the porch look. We barely greeted one another. It took too much effort. We just exchanged our desperate looks and went on slouching down the hallway.

Soon, the final blow from our students: they'll hand in their final papers. Many many pages of inane writing that we will gather into bulky piles and carry out of the classrooms as though we intend to read them.

Me? I skim. I flip through and give them a quick glance just to make sure nobody wrote "I know you're not reading these, bitch." And also to make sure nobody was moronic enough to attach cash to their masterpiece. One girl did, last year. She stapled a 20 dollar bill to her final essay. This muttering, ineffective, waste-of-a-desk girl could not rise to the occasion of any of the really rough parts of class, like, say, getting there on time, ever, or stringing 4 coherent words together. But she coughed up a twenty. I tore her a new rectum, which I'm sure could write better than she did, and told her not only could she be booted from the university for doing that, but what the hell did she think 20 bucks could buy her anyway. What an insult.

8 Comments:

  • At 1:58 PM, Blogger sparrow said…

    We have these reviews we have to write up at work - self reviews, goals and how we will achieve them, etc. There is a great deal of time involved and we put a lot of effort into finding goals we can PROVE we met by next review. A guy at work said he doesn't do them anymore. *GASP!* I asked how he got away with that? He sent me a copy of the last three he submitted.

    Goal: To take Mr. So-and-so's job.

    How to reach Goal: I've been putting arsenic in his coffee every day, when he dies, I'm next in line.

    OMG! Mr. So-and-so is his manager and had signed every single one - never read them, evidently!

    Me? I attached at $50. and a Starbuck's gift card.

    *wink*

     
  • At 5:20 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I'm trying to have empathy for someone who didn't have to go in to work for ten days, and who will have a month long Christmas break, and all summer off.

    I really am.

    Please don't hurt me.

     
  • At 9:17 AM, Blogger Candy Rant said…

    Pixie. Good idea. Any way to avoid paperwork I will do.

     
  • At 9:22 AM, Blogger Candy Rant said…

    Scott, perfectly understandable. Those who have never taught college always say that. So did I. When I first started, I said to my colleagues "What will I DO with all that time off?" And they laughed like grizzled old inmates. Little did I know that most of us work our jobs 7 days a week, missing out that nice weekend day when our "normal" friends are drooling on the couch. Those big chunks of time are are purely to avoid homicide.

    Oh, and usually that month off at Christmas is delicious. But this year I'll be packing to move, planning a wedding, saying goodbye to my friends, and generally going into a neurotic trance in preparation to move to the Southwest. You see, my fiance is a cold weather wussie and can't move to the midwest because any time the temperature outside dips below 58 he cries like a little schoolgirl who has just lost her first game of "Mother May I."

     
  • At 9:29 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    That was hurtful, Candy.

     
  • At 10:41 PM, Blogger Candy Rant said…

    Indeed it was, Scott. Come closer so I can strike again. Hee hee.

     
  • At 7:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I don't know--twenty bucks is twenty bucks. You could buy a couple of gallons of BR's Pralines 'n Cream with that. You know there's this Academic Urban Legend that female undergrads often try to bribe their instructors with offers of sex. A lay for an A. But it's puzzling and maddening: in many years of teaching, I DIDN'T GET ONE GODDAM OFFER! Was it my shave lotion? I thought there was supposed to be something about an Aqua Velva Man? Maybe shudda switched to Hai Karate.
    T from the B.

     
  • At 9:58 PM, Blogger Candy Rant said…

    Tony, Did it ever occur to you that maybe those bubble-headed chicks could instinctively tell that you had too much dignity to respond to their skankly ways? Huh?

    Oh, and I think it was Brut they were after.

     

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